Today’s blog will take a look at yet another great feature in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015’s Spring Release – Sandbox Support for Preview Instances. The CRM 2015 Spring Release provides new capabilities and functionalities that allow administrators to test new updates as well as allowing for administrators to manage testing in a more secure, and reliable way, all without impacting production.
The new features we will discuss below include:
- Preview Sandbox Capabilities
- Preview Storage
- Update Now
- Reset Instance Improvements
To determine your organization’s capabilities, you will need to first login to the O365 portal https://portal.microsoftonline.com/ using your administrator credentials. Under Admin (Administration) on the left-side navigation bar, click on the CRM Option.
After you click on CRM, the CRM Admin Center displays. From here you can view all of your current settings and capabilities.
Preview Sandbox Capabilities
The Preview Instance administration capabilities allows for three common scenarios. They are:
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Clean new implementation and testing on a clean new instance.![]()
Partial or minimal copy of your production instance.![]()
Update a Preview Sandbox Instance (fully copied) of your production organization.
Clean new implementation and testing on a clean new instance.
Partial or minimal copy of your production instance.
Update a Preview Sandbox Instance (fully copied) of your production organization.
Example of the Preview Sandbox Administration page.
Preview Storage
There is also great news for those of you who are worried about storage constraints, because Preview Instances do not consume paid storage! On the image below, you will see that the storage quota is expressly stated by the disclaimer, “Preview Instances do not consume any of the storage quota purchased for Production and Sandbox instances“.
Update Now
With the new updates, you can now update your preview instance on demand.
Reset Instance Improvement
During a reset, you can now change the base language and default currency.
Why use a Sandbox environment?
Solutions that are vital to your organization’s operation and function are run on your Production instance. The ideal place for the development and testing of your new applications, however, is in an isolated, non-production environment. Because changes in a Sandbox Instance will not affect your production, the flexibility is there to allow you to build and modify new and existing applications without affecting the productivity and effectiveness of your day-to-day solutions. The Preview Instance is the perfect solution to provide that much needed flexibility.
With all of these new Sandbox administration capabilities for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015’s Spring Release, you can now easily build, test, deploy, and maintain all of your CRM Online solutions, giving you more flexibility to restart and test upgrades for your non-production instances. You can find more information about CRM 2015 by checking out our website. We would love to hear from you, so please reach out to us with any questions!
Happy CRM’ing!